Romans 6:1-14 - Freed from Sin’s Dominion to Holiness

Romans 6:1-14

Dead to Sin, Alive to God

1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? 3 Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

5 For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. 7 For he who has died has been freed from sin. 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. 13 And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

We are never to forget the price God paid for our sin to cover it and never be condemned for it again.  How could we who have been freed at the highest price of God’s own Son who suffered rejection, abuse, ridicule, false accusations, beating, and nailing painfully to a cross of our curse, how can we then calmly contemplate continuing in sin afterwards and then just say, “once saved, always saved” with no regrets or conviction of continuing to offend our Savior?  We are truly saved by the unmerited grace and goodness of God, but to live in an abhorrence of sin and with the continual mortification (Colossians 3:4-5) of it as our aim to conform in holiness to the righteousness of Christ in whom we stand and not to willingly sin and just throw it on Him as if it means nothing.  We read in 2 Timothy 2:19 that the Lord knows who are truly His and not just religious interlopers who face judgment (Colossians 3:6-7) for continuing in disbelief and disobedience to the gospel.  This goes on to say that if we are truly regenerated in Christ through repentance and faith of believing and receiving Him as our Savior-Lord, that we then will continually make it our aim to depart from all iniquity which is the thought and intent to sin against God.  We died with Christ on the cross as symbolized by baptism which shows us dead and buried after being crucified with Him (Galatians 2:20) and then rising to a new life bent on righteousness as a response and not still on sin as we lived for before in all our dead lives.  We are called absolutely to follow in the footsteps leading away from sin and not excuse it away or trivialize the serious nature of continuing to rebell against our Lord and His word of life.  Sin is serious, but it can be continually forgiven (1 John 1:9) as we work to forsake it as we work out our salvation’s sanctification by the Spirit and word working in us while we choose to walk in this newness of life.  We dare not deny our sin (1 John 1:8, 10) and continue to walk in darkness as unbelievers (1 John 1:6-7) but confess and forsake it for the rest of our lives as sinners saved by grace yet remaining sinners in the old man we keep killing daily in this life until we reach a glorified state in sinless and incorruptible bodies in His eternal presence.  We are no longer slave of sin as it is written here; we look forward expectantly to the resurrection of perfection as we consider that Jesus died to sin once for all for us all to live for God and not for the passing pleasures of sin that once consumed us.  Because of these things we must make it our aim to direct our lives in the direction of disobedience to sin and not to Him.  We are to “reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  This means we count ourselves to have imputed righteousness in Christ in His life we now enjoy and to count ourselves dead to the former desire to sin as our way of life.  We do this by denying the obed to the sin and turn continually from it to following Him according to the guidelines and commands of scripture as we focus our lives on filling our hearts and minds with the precepts of reading and studying the Bible daily as we immerse ourselves in God’s will and aim our lives to hit the mark of holiness instead of missing the mark as we lived to do before our conversion.  We therefore present our lives and desires with resulting thoughts and actions to Him as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1-2) who allow ourselves to be transformed into His likeness as we look into His wonderful face (2 Corinthians 3:18) in daily pursuit of holiness and willing obedience out of love for the one who suffered and died for us!  Since we are no longer under the Law of works, we should be submitting to the rule of God’s grace and not of sin to continue therein.  We truly have been freed from sin’s dominion to be ruled by the holiness of God.  He now is our Sovereign King who rules us well and wisely in all things.  Let us then follow hard after Him and mortify all sin as we run the race to see His face (Job 19:25-26: Philippians 3:13-14, Revelation 22:3-4) in conformity to Jesus Christ our Savior-Lord.